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Rental Agents ridiculous!
Comments
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In one case, a team of five or more East Europeans lead by a Jewish guy, who was recommended by the letting agent, worked most of a day, on a 4 bed semi. All the furnitures were polished, and the carpets were shampooed. All the cobwebs were cleared, and the chandeliers cleaned.
I much prefer a Japanese team from before, who even sent the curtains and bed linen away to be washed. The curtains came back a couple of days later. For some strange reason, they like to put silver foil under the feet of furniture. I am guessing they want the polish to dry so it doesn't get on the carpet."Professional - engaged in a specified activity as one's main paid occupation rather than as an amateur."
A professional cleaner is someone who does cleaning for a living, and, from that, you might expect that they would clean a property to a certain standard (because, if they didn't, they would soon be out of work).
It doesn't guarantee anything, obviously, but it does imply that you'd get a decent level of cleaning.
Anyway, you asked for a definition and there it is (it was quite easy to find on Google by the way). Hope that helps.
Professional is the wrong word.
What it really means is expensive and thorough. There is no 'professional' standard. Hence why when people say ( and tenancy agreements say) get a professional clean; it's really a worthless term.
For example, I will clean your house for £20. I have no qualifications. Yet that would satisfy the claim?0 -
We had the same problem.
It was OH's and my first ever home together, and we treated it like our own for the two years we were there - at our own expense, repainted the doors (same colour) and had the carpets cleaned etc regularly while we were there.
At the end of our tenancy, we paid off our own bat for an end-of-tenancy clean, and it was looking perfectly respectable.
Feedback from the estate agent was that we had "trashed the place". It was almost funny - we were / are two very boring working professionals way past the age of trashing anything!
Estate agent sent in an inspector and told him he was talking rubbish, and made him stump up.
Later transpired he had a history of playing this game with every tenant he had...
As it happens, we are now in the position of imminently becoming acting landlords for my MIL's property (who has dementia and is now in assisted living), and are certainly not planning to be big bad nasty landlords who pull this kind of stunt.
We will play fair by them, as we hope any future tenants will play fair by us.
How did you make holes in the walls...??0 -
.I can count on one hand the number of full deposits I've received back. When I first started renting in 2000 it was generally accepted that as a tenant I was never going to see my deposit again. With hindsight I wish I had taken all those gits to Small Claims.
What utter rubbish, that has never been generally accepted (unless you just mean by you). Most landlords as well as tenants are and have always been pretty decent. Of course there are the minority who are little more than crooks, perhaps you only rented from them.It's someone else's fault.0 -
It's not utter rubbish. That was my experience and the experience of a number of my friends. Were our landlords crooks? Probably. Certainly one landlord was directly responsible for the introduction of HMO licensing in Scotland. Another electrocuted my flat mate by fitting an electric shower himself.0
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What utter rubbish, that has never been generally accepted (unless you just mean by you). Most landlords as well as tenants are and have always been pretty decent. Of course there are the minority who are little more than crooks, perhaps you only rented from them.
has been my experience too, I remember one LL saying when I asked for my deposit "oh you want the deposit back, I normally just keep it for cleaning", I said yes I want it back and the flat will be returned clean, I did get the full deposit back.0 -
Never got my deposit back from any of my student landlords back in the late 90s. Never expected to after the first one or two, but I was a decent person and left it better than I found it usually. Not that the moral high ground pays well. Couldn't get legal aid to sue them and didn't know about small claims.
Left places in a similar way when not a student (pre DPS etc) and usually got all or nearly all of my deposit back even if they've not been great in other ways. Either the landlords were less crooked (which is possible - I bet student lettings attract dodgy landlords because they know students may not know their rights) or they assumed as I was older I was wiser or could afford legal fees.
I have many good friends who are landlords and they'd never treat their tenants as badly as I've been treated over the years so perhaps I've just been unlucky.0 -
Why do you think legislation had been introduced in all parts of the UK regarding deposit protection? It's because a significant number of tenants were not getting some or all their deposits back.0
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This whole professional cleaning thing annoys me, LL can get their houses cleaned and deduct it from their income tax calculation as an allowable expenses, then try and take the cost from their tenant too
We had the carpets cleaned when we left the last place, they werent too bad, but my view to renting is that I will pay for anything that I would have to pay if I owned it, except structual things. Even that wasnt good enough on leaving, but luckily we had a decent agent that mediated very well0 -
It's not utter rubbish. That was my experience and the experience of a number of my friends. Were our landlords crooks? Probably. Certainly one landlord was directly responsible for the introduction of HMO licensing in Scotland. Another electrocuted my flat mate by fitting an electric shower himself.
My "utter rubbish" comment was about your "generally accepted" comment. It has never been generally accepted, of course their are bad LLs but you made it appear that it was a generally accepted view that people didn't expect to see their deposit, that view is simply not correct.It's someone else's fault.0 -
If there wasn't a problem with tenants' deposits being returned, why was deposit protection legislation brought in?0
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